Blue heaven

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/08/2011 (5264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

So remember back in early June when everyone was talking about how the Winnipeg Blue Bombers were going to get steamrolled by the Winnipeg Jets juggernaut and how all the sports fans in town were going to abandon the Bombers for the NHL and the media coverage was going to evaporate and the Bombers were basically going to play this season in an empty Canad Inns Stadium?

Yeah, well, never mind.

Because not only has none of those things come to pass, it has unfolded in exactly the opposite fashion as a city starved for any kind of winner is hyperventilating over the first-place Bombers these days like we haven’t seen in these parts for years.

Attendance could not be higher — literally. Media coverage has been blanket. Even practices have become well-attended spectacles in the past couple weeks as the wins have mounted, and seemingly everyone fights for a seat on the Blue Bombers bandwagon.

Let’s begin with attendance, simply because that was the area most “experts” felt was most vulnerable for the Bombers with the sudden arrival of the Jets in town and the unprecedented cash-call on Winnipeg sports fans in June that came with the Jets’ brief and spectacular season-ticket campaign.

Well, not only have the Bombers held their own in attendance, they are in the midst of putting together something very special indeed. Consider: After selling what the club believes was a record number of season tickets, the Bombers have now also sold out the past two games in a row and appear likely to sell out the next two as well, with 25,500 tickets already sold for the Aug. 26 clash with Hamilton and now just a couple hundred seats still left for the Banjo Bowl against Saskatchewan on Sept. 11.

With the next home game after that on Sept. 30 against the two-time defending champion Montreal Alouettes, in what could conceivably be a battle for first place in the East, the Bombers could conceivably find themselves having sold out five straight home games when the calendar turns to October.

Call it pent-up demand, says Bombers quarterback Buck Pierce.

“People like a winner. People like something positive to cheer about,” Pierce said Wednesday. “They’ve been loyal and they deserve a product that they’re proud of. And I think it’s that, more than anything — they’re proud of the men that play here and go out and represent the Blue Bombers.”

Then there’s the media coverage. Always the first on the scene of a disaster to shoot the wounded, the reverse is true for the media when times are good. And times have been very, very good in Swaggerville of late.

Take, for instance, the throng of jackals who descended on Canad Inns Stadium Tuesday for Bombers practice — a gaggle that included crews from CBC French, CBC English and The National (doing a story on the sports renaissance taking place in Winnipeg), as well as crews from CTV, Global and Shaw, four scribes from the two print outlets in town and, of course, the legendary voice of the Bombers, CJOB’s Bob Irving.

Put it all together and you’d have thought it was Jennifer Aniston walking topless on the field after practice, not Odell Willis.

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Confronted with that salivating mob for his traditional post-practice news conference on Tuesday, Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice begged just one indulgence as he stared back at the swollen media bandwagon in front of him.

“I just ask that you be consistent,” said LaPolice, who surely knows we will not be anything of the sort.

For the time being, this much is now unequivocally clear this season: The Bombers can not only hold their own against their competition in the CFL, they can also do so against their competition in the NHL.

Hard to believe there were grave doubts on both fronts barely two months ago.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca